im shooting in a room that has all white walls..inc the ceiling. it'll work for a high key setting but that's far from what im trying to accomplish--night low key. what is the best approach when it comes to equipment, technique? thanks for reading!

Hi Natalie, well when you work in a white room for a low key night, the best you can do is use a lot of black flags and black fabrics..., i didn't use bounce lights perhaps thats ruin your plans... Directional light i guess is your way, maybe fresnels and kinos, i don't know what you wanna do, if you can be more specific, perhaps we can help you more...

Try to keep your lighting from spilling onto the background and far wall as possible. Use flags, snoots, and blackwrap to aim your lighting only onto your subjects. With soft sources like diffusion frames or Chimeras you can use eggcrates to control the spill without taking up too much space in the room. Hang duvetyn on the off-camera walls and floor to control ambient light.

I little bit of art direction can really save you, too. Utilize artwork on the walls, bookcases, plants, whatever is appropriate for the location to break up the plain white background.

Sometimes you can take a sort of "inverted" approach to the lighting, letting sunlight (real or artificial) or spill from practicals illiminate the walls with patterns or pools of light, and then slightly underexpose your subjects in the middleground for a semi-silhouetted look. If you expose carefully this can look natural and dramatic (sometimes a little edgelight on your subjects can help with this).

Hi Natalie, well when you work in a white room for a low key night, the best you can do is use a lot of black flags and black fabrics..., i didn't use bounce lights perhaps thats ruin your plans... Directional light i guess is your way, maybe fresnels and kinos, i don't know what you wanna do, if you can be more specific, perhaps we can help you more...

Cheers

yeah i figured bounce will ruin the shot..perhaps using a soft light for bounce may be acceptable for CU maybe MS. using 2 main motivated light sources--moonlight from the window and incandescent hanging light a bit close to to the opposite end not far from a door. the front of the door will have a motivated porch light. in any case i'd need to mock moonlight and the porch light. the light itself will be in some shots..WS..but obviously it wont be bright enough alone. thanks a bunch!

I little bit of art direction can really save you, too. Utilize artwork on the walls, bookcases, plants, whatever is appropriate for the location to break up the plain white background.

As Michael says you can do a very good and close work with art department, this guys could be a very good help to save your scene, a properly mixing of decoration and furniture help you a lot. Just one more thing, I assume when you talk "moonlight", i imagine your source (perhaps your key) coming through the window, just one tip, you can do two things (my point of view), first see how the light bounce into the room, perhaps helps a lot to create an ambient light (low key) or perhaps blow all the room, here you can use black fabric on the floor blocking the light and handle it...

yeah painting the room black is not an option. i was suggested yesterday actually to use a bunch of duvetyne or black trash bags...but that will require a a heck of a lot either to cover the whole room. i was thinking i can use them as negative fill, to control light spill. i dont think i need to "black out" the entire room. i dont think adding too many set props will be approp. for this particular shoot but a couple items to control light wont hurt.

im shooting in a room that has all white walls..inc the ceiling. it'll work for a high key setting but that's far from what im trying to accomplish--night low key. what is the best approach when it comes to equipment, technique? thanks for reading!

Natalie...it is going to be very difficult to create Low Key in tight location with white walls.. Simply not much room for all those light control accessories.You can still do it easy if you don't mind going "hard"... Hard Light... Just pin spot your action areas with fresnells... you will not have to deal with light leak like you would had you gone "soft".You will still have to use Flags (but not as many) and Black Wrap... wrap the instrument's Barndoors with Black Wrap where they leak light.

i fig when shooting WS the black bags and duvetyne may possibly be seen in the shot. the smaller fresnel spot lights seem to be a better choice with the usual flags, nets, scrim kit + black wrap. that is the toughest part to light..the lights coming from outside seem easier to work with. thanks.

its an apt so i'd probably have to paint it back to white. the room isn't small. if it were my house i'd probably go with painting it.

Maybe this sound ironic but i never allow no one (including me) shooting at my house, never... I guess we always know how the produccion do with a locations, sometime it could be a catastrophe, you know